Limited edition of 300 copies on 10 inch black vinyl. Electronic arts pioneer, activist and researcher Konrad Becker (aka Monoton) teams up with vocalist Sela for a project with a mission: unveiling Operations in a shadow world of mediated realities. Linking 21st century technology to ancient communication practices in several directions at once the hypermedia wizard and the young Viennese singer celebrate the powers of media over matter. Sound becomes a weapon against operation systems of containment and to be buried alive by technologies of symbolic domination. Operations not only gives a voice to radical discourse - but basslines and a deep groove.
The four-track EP covers vocal tunes from the recent Operations performance series and short instrumental pieces for Theater of Operations. Based on Konrad Becker's Dictionary of Operations the cinematic live-show evokes phantasmagoric spheres of information environments with pulsing street sounds. Exploring communication machines haunted by ghosts, mirror worlds and dangerous trans-communications. Channeling voices and emanating streams of ectoplasm Sela stages a soulful embodiment of a medium in an urban ghost dance. Spoken words and broken beats respond to the enigma of the zombies: What is the difference between the dead and the living?
Operations EP's imagery is inspired by vaudeville soirees conjuring miraculous wonders and 19th century spectacles of new technology as in the Theatre Houdin of Paris. Digitally recorded but designed in a 10" historic gramophone style, the record resembles artifacts from the enchanted twilight zones of circling quasi-objects. Possession an eerily deep tune grooved into side A is followed by crisply chilled beats of Enchantment; the other side unleashes scary Monsters on the Rise tailed by the convoluted noise dub Interlude.
- Possession is a 150bpm voodoo ritual addressing mediated flows, the spirits of commodities and states. Theaters of possession are the battleground for control of object and subject in information feudalism. In a setting of zombies and haunted property, offbeats trigger the coming of the Loas. Sela's voice evokes hidden channels of libidinal economies, veiled desires and the empires of terminally unfulfilled longing.
- Monsters on the Rise! beat the drums of madness and make some twisted noise for anomalies fighting against enforced normalization. Exploring the comedy in the dark cosmic horror of uncanny dimensions: Who knows what quasi-monsters press hideously upon our globe? A threat emanating from cracks of everyday categories, monsters raise the question: What is?